Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense: The Rosary Girls, the Skin Gods, Merciless, Badlands

by Richard Montanari

  Why was he here?

  Again, the question.

  Twenty years on the streets of one of the most violent cities in the world put him on the block. He didn’t know a single detective who didn’t drink, hadn’t rehabbed, didn’t gamble, didn’t frequent the whores, didn’t raise a hand to his children, his wife. With this job came excess, and if you didn’t balance the excess of horror with an excess of passion for something—even domestic violence—the valves creaked and moaned until you imploded one day and put the barrel against your palate.

  In his time as a homicide detective he had stood in dozens of parlors, hundreds of driveways, a thousand vacant lots, the voiceless dead waiting for him like a gouache of rainy watercolor in the near distance. Such bleak beauty. He could sleep with distance. It was detail that sullied his dreams.

  He recalled every detail of that sweltering August morning he had been called to Fairmount Park: the thick buzz of flies overhead, the way Deirdre Pettigrew’s skinny legs emerged from the bushes, her bloodied white panties bunched around one ankle, the bandage on her right knee.

  He knew then, as he had known every single time he had seen a murdered child, that he had to step up, regardless how eroded his soul, how diminished his instincts. He had to brave the morning, no matter what demons tracked him through the night.

  In the first half of his career it had been about the power, the inertia of justice, the rush of the capture. It was about him. But somewhere along the way, it became bigger. It became about all the dead girls.

  And now, Tessa Wells.

  He closed his eyes, again felt the frigid waters of the Delaware River eddy around him, the breath being wrenched from his chest.

  Below him, the gang gunships cruised. The sound of the hip-hop bass chords shook the floor, the windows, the walls, rising from the city streets like steel steam.

  The deviant’s hour was coming. Soon he would walk among them.

  The monsters were sliding out of their lairs.

  And as he sat in a place where men traded their self-respect for a few moments of numbed silence, a place where animals walk erect, Kevin Francis Byrne knew that a new monster had stirred in Philadelphia, a dark seraph of death that would lead him to an uncharted dominion, summoning him to a depth to which men like Gideon Pratt only aspired.

  14

  MONDAY, 8:00 PM

  It is night in Philadelphia.

  I am standing on North Broad Street, looking toward Center City and the commanding figure of William Penn, craftily lighted atop city hall, feeling the warmth of the spring day fading into the sizzle of red neon and long, de Chirico shadows, marveling once more at the two faces of the city.

  This is not the egg tempera of daytime Philly, the bright colors of Robert Indiana’s Love or the Mural Arts Program. This is Philly at night, a city rendered in thick, violent brushstrokes, an impasto of sedimentary pigments.

  The old building on North Broad has witnessed many nights, its cast pilasters standing silent guard for almost a century. In many ways, it is the stoic face of the city: the old wooden seats, the coffered ceiling, the carved medallions, the worn canvas where a thousand men have spat and bled and fallen.

  We file in. We smile at each other, raise eyebrows, clap shoulders.

  I can smell the copper of their blood.

  These men might know my deeds, but they do not know my face. They think I am a madman, that I pounce from the darkness like some horror movie villain. They will read about the things I have done, at their breakfast tables, on SEPTA, in the food courts, and they will shake their heads and ask why.

  Could it be they know why?

  If one were to peel back the phyllo layers of wickedness and pain and cruelty, could it be that these men might do the same if they had the chance? Might they lure each other’s daughters to the dark street corner, the empty building, the deep-shadowed heart of the park? Might they wield their knives and pistols and bludgeons and finally utter their rage? Might they spend the currency of their wrath and then scurry off to Upper Darby and New Hope and Upper Merion and the safety of their lies?

  There is always a morbid contest in the soul, a struggle between the loathing and the need, between the darkness and the light.

  The bell rings. We rise from our stools. We meet in the center.

  Philadelphia, your daughters are not safe.

  You are here because you know that. You are here because you do not have the courage to be me. You are here because you are afraid of becoming me.

  I know why I am here.

  Jessica.

  15

  MONDAY, 8:30 PM

  FORGET CAESAR’S PALACE. Forget Madison Square Garden. Forget the MGM Grand. The best place in America—some would argue, the world—to watch a prizefight, was The Legendary Blue Horizon on North Broad Street. In a town that had spawned the likes of Jack O’Brien, Joe Frazier, James Shuler, Tim Witherspoon, Bernard Hopkins—not to mention Rocky Balboa—The Legendary Blue Horizon was a treasure, and, as goes the Blue, so goes Philly fisticuffs.

  Jessica and her opponent—Mariella “Sparkle” Munoz—dressed and warmed up in the same room. As Jessica waited for her great-uncle Vittorio, a former heavyweight himself, to tape her hands, she glanced over at her opponent. Sparkle was in her late twenties, with big arms and what looked like a seventeen-inch neck. A real shock absorber. She had a flat nose, scar tissue over both eyes, and what seemed to be a perpetual game face: a permanent grimace that was supposed to intimidate her opponents.

  I’m shakin’ over here, Jessica thought.

  When she wanted to, Jessica could affect the posture and demeanor of a shrinking violet, a helpless woman who might have trouble opening a carton of orange juice without a big strong man to come to her rescue. This, Jessica hoped, was just honey for the grizzlies.

  What it really meant was:

  Bring it on, baby.

  THE FIRST ROUND BEGAN with what’s known in boxing parlance as the “feeling out” process. Both women jabbing lightly, stalking each other. A clinch or two. A little bit of mugging and intimidation. Jessica was a few inches taller than Sparkle, but Sparkle made up for it in girth. She looked like a Maytag in knee socks.

  About midround the action started to pick up, with the crowd starting to get into it. Every time Jessica landed even a jab, the crowd, led by a contingent of cops from Jessica’s old district, went appropriately nuts.

  When the bell rang at the end of the first round, Jessica stepped away clean and Sparkle threw a body shot, clearly, and deliberately, late. Jessica pushed her and the ref had to get between them. The ref for this fight was a short black guy in his late fifties. Jessica guessed that the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission thought they didn’t need a big guy for the bout because it was just a lightweight bout, and female lightweights at that.

  Wrong.

  Sparkle threw a shot over the ref’s head, glancing off Jessica’s shoulder; Jessica retaliated with a hard jab that caught Sparkle on the side of the jaw. Sparkle’s corner rushed in, along with Uncle Vittorio and although the crowd was cheering them on—some of the best fights in Blue Horizon history took place between rounds—they managed to separate the women.

  Jessica plopped down on the stool as Uncle Vittorio stepped in front of her.

  “Muckin bidge,” Jessica muttered through the mouthpiece.

  “Just relax,” Vittorio said. He pulled the mouthpiece out, wiped her face. Angela grabbed one of the water bottles in the ice bucket, popped the plastic top, and held it near Jessica’s mouth.

  “Yer droppin’ yer right hand every time you throw a hook,” Vittorio said. “How many times we go over this? Keep yer right hand up.” Vittorio slapped Jessica’s right glove.

  Jessica nodded, rinsed her mouth, spat in the bucket.

  “Seconds out,” yelled the referee from center ring.

  Fastest damn sixty seconds ever, Jessica thought.

  Jessica stood as Uncle Vittorio eased out of the ring—when you’re seventy-nin
e, you ease out of everything—and grabbed the stool out of the corner. The bell rang, and the two fighters approached each other.

  For the first minute of round two, it was much the same as it was in the first round. At the midway point, however, everything changed. Sparkle worked Jessica against the ropes. Jessica took the opportunity to launch a hook and, sure enough, she dropped her right hand. Sparkle countered with a left hook of her own, one that started somewhere in the Bronx, made its way down Broadway, across the bridge, and onto I-95.

  The shot caught Jessica flush on the chin, stunning her, driving her deep into the ropes. The crowd fell silent. Jessica always knew that someday she might meet her match, but, before Sparkle Munoz moved in for the kill, Jessica saw the unthinkable.

  Sparkle Munoz grabbed her crotch and yelled:

  “Who’s godda balls now?”

  As Sparkle stepped in, preparing to throw what Jessica was certain would be the knockout blow, a montage of blurry images unspooled in her mind.

  Like the time, on a drunk and disorderly call on Fitzwater Street, on her second week on the job, the wino puked into her holster.

  Or the time Lisa Cefferati called her “Gio-vanni Big Fanny” on the playground of St. Paul’s.

  Or the day she came home early and saw Michelle Brown’s dog-piss-yellow, cheap-ass, size ten Payless-looking shoes at the foot of the stairs, right next to her husband’s boots.

  At this moment the rage came from another place, a place where a young girl named Tessa Wells lived and laughed and loved. A place now silenced by the dark waters of a father’s grief. That was the picture she needed.

  Jessica cranked up every one of her 130 pounds, rolled her toes into the canvas, and unleashed a right cross that caught Sparkle on the tip of her chin, turning her head for a second like a well-oiled doorknob. The sound was massive, echoing throughout the Blue Horizon, mingling with the sounds of all the other great shots ever thrown in the building. Jessica saw Sparkle’s eyes flash Tilt! and roll back into her head for a second before she collapsed to the canvas.

  “Geddup!” Jessica shouted. “Geddafuggup!”

  The referee ordered Jessica to a neutral corner before returning to the supine form of Sparkle Munoz and resuming his count. But the count was moot. Sparkle rolled onto her side like a beached manatee. This fight was over.

  The crowd at the Blue Horizon shot to its collective feet with a roar that shook the rafters.

  Jessica raised both hands in the air and did her victory dance as Angela ran into the ring and threw her arms around her.

  Jessica looked around the room. She spotted Vincent in the front row of the balcony. He had attended every one of her fights when they were together, but Jessica hadn’t been sure if he’d be at this one.

  A few seconds later Jessica’s father stepped into the ring, Sophie in his arms. Sophie never watched Jessica fight in the ring, of course, but she seemed to like the spotlight after a victory every bit as much as her mother. This night, Sophie wore her matching raspberry fleece separates and little Nike sweatband, looking like a toddlerweight contender herself. Jessica smiled, gave her father and daughter a wink. She was okay. Better than okay. The adrenaline hit her in a rush and she felt as if she could take on the world.

  She held her cousin tighter as the crowd continued to bellow, chanting, “Balls, Balls, Balls, Balls . . .”

  Over the roar, Jessica shouted into Angela’s ear. “Angie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do me a favor.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t ever let me fight this fuckin’ gorilla again.”

  FORTY MINUTES LATER, on the sidewalk in front of the Blue, Jessica signed a few autographs for a pair of twelve-year-old girls who looked at her with a mixture of admiration and idol worship. She gave them the standard stay-in-school, stay off drugs sermons and they promised they would.

  Jessica was just about to head to her car when she sensed a presence nearby.

  “Remind me never to get you mad at me.” The deep voice came from behind her.

  Jessica’s hair was wet with sweat and heading in six directions. She smelled like Seabiscuit after a mile-and-a-quarter run and she could feel the right side of her face swelling to the approximate size, shape, and color of a ripe eggplant.

  She turned around to see one of the most beautiful men she had ever known.

  It was Patrick Farrell.

  And he was holding a rose.

  WHILE PETER TOOK SOPHIE TO HIS HOUSE, Jessica and Patrick sat in a dark corner of the Quiet Man Pub on the lower floor of Finnigan’s Wake, a popular Irish pub and cop hangout on Third and Spring Garden Streets, their backs to the Strawbridge’s wall.

  It was not, however, dark enough for Jessica, even though she had done a quick remodeling of her face and hair in the ladies’ room.

  She nursed a double scotch.

  “That was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen in my life,” Patrick said.

  He wore a charcoal cashmere turtleneck and black pleated slacks. He smelled great, which was one of the many things that time-tunneled her back to the days when they had been an item. Patrick Farrell always smelled great. And those eyes. Jessica wondered how many women over the years had tumbled headfirst into those deep blue eyes.

  “Thanks,” she said, instead of something remotely witty or minutely intelligent. She held her drink glass against her face. The swelling was down. Thank God. She didn’t relish looking like the Elephant Woman in front of Patrick Farrell.

  “I don’t know how you do it.”

  Jessica shrugged her best aw shucks. “Well, the hard part is learning how to take a shot with your eyes open.”

  “Doesn’t it hurt?”

  “Of course it hurts,” she said. “You know what it feels like?”

  “What?”

  “It feels like getting punched in the face.”

  Patrick laughed. “Touché.”

  “On the other hand, there’s no feeling I can think of like the one you get from decking your opponent. God help me, I love that part.”

  “So, do you know it when you land it?”

  “The knockout punch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh yeah,” Jessica said. “It’s just like when you catch a baseball on the fat part of the bat. Remember that? No vibration, no effort. Just . . . contact.”

  Patrick smiled, shaking his head as if to concede that she was a hundred times braver than he. But Jessica knew this wasn’t true. Patrick was an ER physician, and she couldn’t think of any job tougher than that.

  What took even more courage, Jessica thought, was that Patrick long ago stood up to his father, one of the most renowned heart surgeons in Philadelphia. Martin Farrell had expected Patrick to pursue a career as a cardiac surgeon. Patrick grew up in Bryn Mawr, attended Harvard Medical School, did his residency at Johns Hopkins, the path to stardom all but furrowed in front of him.

  But when his kid sister Dana was killed in a Center City drive-by shooting, an innocent bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time, Patrick decided to devote his life to working as a trauma physician at an inner-city hospital. Martin Farrell all but disowned his son.

  It was something Jessica and Patrick shared—a career selecting them, as a result of a tragedy, instead of the other way around. Jessica wanted to ask how Patrick was getting along with his father now that so much time had passed, but she didn’t want to open any old wounds.

  They fell silent, listening to the music, catching each other’s eyes, mooning like a pair of teenagers. A few cops from the Third District stopped by with congratulations for Jessica, drunkenly shadowboxing their way to the table.

  Eventually, Patrick brought the conversation around to work. Safe territory for a married woman and an old flame.

  “How is it working in the big leagues?”

  Big leagues, Jessica thought. The big leagues have a way of making you seem small. “It’s still early days, but it’s a long way from my days in a sect
or car,” she said.

  “So, what, you don’t miss chasing down purse snatchers, breaking up bar fights, and shuttling pregnant women to the hospital?”

  Jessica smiled a little wistfully. “Purse snatchers and bar fights? No love lost there. As far as pregnant women go, I guess I retired with a record of one and one in that department.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I was in a sector car,” Jessica said, “I had one baby born in the backseat. Lost one.”

  Patrick sat a little straighter. Interested, now. This was his world. “What do you mean? How did you lose one?”

  This was not Jessica’s favorite story. She was already sorry she brought it up. It looked like she had to tell it. “It was Christmas Eve, three years ago. Remember that storm?”

  It had been one of the worst blizzards in a decade. Ten inches of fresh snow, howling winds, temperatures around zero. The city all but shut down.

  “Oh, yeah,” Patrick said.

  “Anyway, I was on last-out. It’s just after midnight and I’m in a Dunkin’ Donuts, getting coffee for me and my partner.”

  Patrick raised an eyebrow, meaning: Dunkin’ Donuts?

  “Don’t even say it,” Jessica said, smiling.

  Patrick zipped his lips.

  “I was just about to leave, when I hear this moaning. Turns out there was a pregnant woman in one of the booths. She was seven or eight months pregnant, and something was definitely wrong. I called for a rescue but all the EMS units were on runs, skidded out, frozen fuel lines. A nightmare. We were just a few blocks from Jefferson so I got her in the squad car and we took off. We get to around Third and Walnut and we hit this patch of ice, skidded into a line of parked cars. We got stuck.”

  Jessica sipped her drink. If telling the story made her feel bad, wrapping it up made her feel worse. “I called for assistance but by the time they got there, it was too late. The baby was stillborn.”

  The look in Patrick’s eyes said he understood. It is never easy to lose one, no matter what the circumstances. “Sorry to hear it.”

  “Yeah, well, I made up for it a few weeks later,” Jessica said. “My partner and I delivered a big baby boy down on South. And I mean big. Nine pounds and change. Like delivering a calf. I still get a Christmas card every year from the parents. After that, I applied for the Auto Unit. I had my fill of ob-gyn work.”